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Talk:Charles Evans Hughes
Oh hell yeah! Turtle Fan 15:51, August 6, 2011 (UTC) :Yeah, I popped over to the library and reviewed the story. Don't know how I missed that reference the first time around. :Thanks to Hughes here, we now have every GOP POTUS nominee between James Garfield and Richard Nixon. If HT could do something with Hayes, and then play around in the 1990s a bit more, we'd have all of them. TR 20:54, August 7, 2011 (UTC) ::The winner of the closest presidential election in US history, whose term saw a crisis that forced a pretty drastic change in economic policy and the end of Reconstruction? Yes, there's fertile ground for AH there. And we already have the loser, ironically enough. ::I wrote a Bob Dole article on the Stirling Wiki; there's reference to his being President when the US and its allies build their base on Venus in The Sky People. HT could have easily snuck Bush the Elder into DoI. Maybe he'll see us pining for it and put him in TWTPE 4: McGill gets transferred to a carrier and starts hanging out with the pilots, like Carsten used to hang out with the radiomen? (God, can you imagine McGill working his way up to captain of a ship? He'd have to transfer branches of service, obviously.) ::Other than that it's just Ford and McCain. Ford would surely have appeared in WoOD (heh heh, wood--very appropriate acronym for a JFK story, actually) if it hadn't been abandoned. (What a blow that cancellation was to the Historical Figures ranks.) McCain . . . I guess he could show up in a Vietnam story, not that HT's ever shown any interest in writing one; the closest he's ever come is a couple of sentences saying that Emmett Bragg had gained combat experience there. And then there's always the extremely remote possibility of McCain appearing in Supervolcano; I wouldn't hold my breath. ::Of course, by the time TWTPE 4 comes out, we'll be within a few weeks of the RNC's next nominating convention, and unless they end up giving McCain or Dole or Bush the Elder another try, that's just going to leave us more holes. ::Anyway--What's the Presidential Candidates category look like Democrat-wise? Would a partisan subdivision make sense? Turtle Fan 02:07, August 8, 2011 (UTC) :::We have a couple of small "slams" as it were: Stephen Douglas (if we downplay the clusterfuck that was 1860) through Winfield Scott Hancock, then Wilson to Davis, then Smith through Truman, then JFK through Humphrey. Then the random ones: Jackson, Polk, Carter and Clinton. :::It might be worth doing. We could certainly justify the OTL/ATL split for both of the major parties. TR 02:55, August 8, 2011 (UTC) President Hughes It was hard not to read Peggy Druce's remark that, if not for losing California, Hughes might have won in 1916, and start to wonder if HT was thinking out loud. TR (talk) 05:14, August 29, 2012 (UTC) :Donut, not sure why I didn't answer this before. :For some reason I've found myself poring over the lists of candidates who've lost elections, of late. I've come to the conclusion that, of every failed candidate in the entire history of the United States, every last one, Hughes is the best of them all. I'm not sure how the world would be different if he'd won either, but I'm absolutely certain it would have been better. I'd get behind HT exploring that. Unfortunately, if he hasn't given any hint of doing so after a year and a half, he's not likely to, is he? Turtle Fan (talk) 01:26, March 29, 2014 (UTC) ::The 1916 election is one of the few elections that was legitimately close enough that you can change the outcome with the slightest of PODs (in this case, if you have Hughes actually meet with Hiram Johnson, he can get Johnson's full support and that could make all the difference for fiction-writing purposes), rather than rewriting months or years of history. :::It's easy to do--painfully easy. Up there with 1876, 1884, and 2000. Turtle Fan (talk) 00:58, March 30, 2014 (UTC) ::::Throw 1824 and 1800 in and I think we've named them all. TR (talk) 01:18, March 30, 2014 (UTC) :::::In 1960, there were a lot of states Kennedy got by less than 1% of the vote, more than enough to give Nixon a landslide; though if you put those in play, you have to do the same with California, which allows Kennedy to make up ground. There are a lot of ways this scenario could go, but nothing simple like Hughes meets Johnson, Blaine doesn't alienate the Mugwumps, etc. Not sure if this qualifies as "the slightest of PODs," but if you have Ross Perot suddenly realize what a weirdo he is, drop out and throw his weight to Bush the Elder, 1992 goes the other way. Turtle Fan (talk) 03:37, March 30, 2014 (UTC) ::For myself, I'd say a Hughes presidency would yield different but not necessarily better world. I don't think we'd stay out of the war, given Hughes's pro-preparedness stand, and the fact that most of that foundation had already been laid by the Wilson administration (whether it meant to or not) and Berlin's erratic behavior. Unrestricted submarine warfare would probably return regardless who was in the White House. Should we enter the war, I think it's safe to assume that Hughes would not have brought the Fourteen Points to France with him (assuming he went to France); conceivably, the peace imposed could have much worse than in OTL (or the same; obviously Wilson didn't soften Versailles as much as he wanted, but it's hard to measure what his ultimate impact was). :::I agree it would have been very hard to keep out of war altogether. I might hope he'd be more involved in tactical planning than Wilson, and would give Pershing orders that would have checked his natural inclination to be that moron Foch's bitch. But that may just be wishful thinking. I don't think Hughes would have wanted the Fourteen Points. He would have wanted something to show for the war, and I believe he was high-minded enough that his something would have been better than "Let's be complete bastards to the Germans!" Certainly he would not have blocked Lodge out of the negotiations--assuming of course a Republican Senate in 1918; if the Democrats retain that body, then it's Gilbert Hitchcock whom Hughes needs to win over. Don't know much about him, though I do believe Hughes was a bit less likely to allow partisan squabbling to get in the way. :::The main accomplishment of Hughes's tenure as Secretary of State was the Washington Naval Conference, to which he played host and was a very involved leader of the American delegation. Based on this I will say he recognized that avoiding another war would require multilateral commitments from all parties concerned, rather than shifting the blame to one side and trying to hold them down as punishment for something for which they were no more responsible than the winners. If that's his guiding principle, I will say that, to the extent he affected Versailles at all, he would have a moderating effect. And if the US signs on, it has exponentially more moral authority to lobby the British, French, and Italians to curb their excesses. I won't go so far as to say that means we don't need to worry about someone like Hitler, but it's a step in the right direction, even if it doesn't end up being a huge step. Turtle Fan (talk) 00:58, March 30, 2014 (UTC) ::::Fair points. TR (talk) 01:18, March 30, 2014 (UTC) ::Domestically, I think the few labor laws Wilson managed to pass were better for the country than the pro-business stance Hughes was moving towards (he thought the 8 hour day was bad for business, for example). I don't know if Hughes could have overturned those--after 1916, there was a two seat GOP majority in the House, but the Dems firmly held the Senate, but I rather prefer those being left alone. But otherwise Hughes was at least as Progressive as Wilson, so I can't imagine too many different tactics. Nothing suggests that Hughes would have been worse on race relations than Wilson, for example, which is good, but I don't get the sense that he'd be better than Wilson. :::There's no question Hughes would have taken his place among the Progressive Presidents. They weren't perfect, but they were better than the wave of presidents that came before or the wave that came after. And if nothing else, a still-energetic, one-term incumbent Republican president means there's no opening for that ridiculous Harding. Turtle Fan (talk) 00:58, March 30, 2014 (UTC) ::::I suppose short-circuiting Harding would be an improvement. TR (talk) 01:18, March 30, 2014 (UTC) :::::You got that right. Turtle Fan (talk) 03:40, March 30, 2014 (UTC) ::My off-the-cuff, two-cents-worth of opinion. (For the record, I think James M. Cox was probably the best loser--unlike Hughes, I don't see how you can give Cox the election without so dramatically rewriting history, as I discussed above). :::Cox was the better choice over Harding, but as you say, he didn't have a prayer. In 2008 I was struck by how similar the political situation was to 1920, at least in terms of the relationships among the various key players; I'm certainly not suggesting there were 1:1 correlations between Obama and Harding, McCain and Cox, Bush and Wilson, etc. Even without such an awful alternative, Cox would rank high on my list of should-have-been presidents, though I should say that, as I read over the list, there aren't that many who inspire strong feelings one way or the other. Burr and McClellan are obvious nightmare scenarios, as is George Wallace, though national stability was higher in what would have been his term, so he would not have had the ability to create disasters on the scale the other two would have. Mostly though, they're just mediocrities. Sometimes you'd prefer a mediocrity to the terrible president we did get (Winfield Scott, for instance); other times you're relieved the mediocrity didn't defeat the excellent president we got (Alton Parker, for instance); still other times it's six of one half a dozen of the other (James Blaine for instance). :::Had Hughes won in 1916 Cox would have had to challenge his reelection bid in 1920 (assuming he was still the Democratic nominee, which is of course by no means certain). We'd have to see what Hughes's first term would look like before we decide how that would go, but I'd happily take either Hughes or Cox over Harding. In both cases the Progressive Era survives the war, marches on into the 1920s, tames the economic volatility of that era, and if it doesn't prevent the Depression, leaves enough of an apparatus in place to mitigate its effects. Between gutless Harding and soulless Coolidge, the Progressive reforms were pretty much rolled back to close to zero, and Hoover, who I believe would have been firmly in the Progressive line had that line remained unbroken long enough, had nothing to work with. The political near-miracle of the 100 Days' Legislation had to rebuild the Progressive apparatus from scratch, and even then it was a poor substitute for what we might otherwise have had, and the New Deal did far less to turn things around than we like to remember. :::Of course, I do believe the above paragraph reflects quite a lot of the AH sin of "Let's change one thing and assume everything else was still in place years later." So shame on me. Turtle Fan (talk) 00:58, March 30, 2014 (UTC) ::::More and more I don't find that to be such a sin, particularly if there's still a good story to go along with it. TR (talk) 01:18, March 30, 2014 (UTC) :::::From the perspective of someone who sees AH as a genre of fiction, I'm always willing to make sacrifices in the interest of a good story. From the perspective of someone who sees AH as a legitimate tool to understand history, I feel that analyses such as the above have some use. Turtle Fan (talk) 03:40, March 30, 2014 (UTC) ::And I would like to see HT play in the early 20th Century more. He's said several times that WWI was the pivotal choke point of the century, not WWII. I'd be pretty happy with any extended alternate WWI work (I mean one where the POD isn't based on the ACW or on the Schlieffen Plan working) heck even a TWPE: WWI edition would be welcome. Hughes winning in 1916 might yield such a work. TR (talk) 15:40, March 29, 2014 (UTC) :::Yes, WWI is the point at which you can head off WWII. It's far more important. Alas, WWII is the one with all the sex appeal. Generating excitement for a WWI project would require a proven brand name, and Turtledove's the man for that. Turtle Fan (talk) 00:58, March 30, 2014 (UTC) ::::Given the centennial of its beginning is coming up, interest might increase and AHs on it are certainly possible. ML4E (talk) 18:03, March 30, 2014 (UTC) :::::^^^ Well so much for that prediction. ML4E (talk) 23:45, November 16, 2017 (UTC) :::::Well, centennial of the end is next year, but based on what he's let slip about his projects, I don't think HT going to have a WWI offering in 2018. Maybe a short or two, but not a novel or series. TR (talk) 23:57, November 16, 2017 (UTC) ::::::Sadly, by this point, if HT did an alternate WWI, it would likely consist mainly of interchangeable grunt POVs in the trenches, broken only by visits to the American home front where life continues day to day. All truly interesting plot twists and European political developments would be communicated to us entirely by newspapers read by POVs of the latter set.JonathanMarkoff (talk) 05:45, November 18, 2017 (UTC) Associate and Chief I actually think a double-cat would be ok here. Hughes did a stint as an associate justice, resigned to pursue other things (including the presidency) and then was appointed as chief justice. TR (talk) 18:47, October 14, 2015 (UTC) :If that is the case, then that could be a good idea. I had assumed he had been an associate justice before being appointed chief justice. ML4E (talk) 18:50, October 14, 2015 (UTC)